Dave Digs Disney
“George Avakian’s sleeve note recounted the story of Brubeck—by then a father of five—calling him from a phone booth in Disneyland during a family outing. Had things panned out in accordance with their initial telephone conversation, Columbia would have released an album called Jazz Goes to Disneyland, with a front cover featuring all five Brubeck children posing next to a Disneyland exhibit alongside their father’s quartet. But rights issues (Disney already owned their own Disneyland record label) and someone’s suggestion for an attractively alliterative album title handed us the record we know: Dave Digs Disney, with, on its front cover, a beaming Dave surrounded by pencil sketches of Mickey Mouse, Pluto, and Donald Duck.
Disney tunes had been part of the Brubeck repertoire since at least 1952, when the quartet (then with Wyatt Ruther and Lloyd Davis) recorded “Alice in Wonderland” and two separate versions of “Give a Little Whistle” (one during the same session that produced the classic “Over the Rainbow” and one on the live tapes from which Fantasy would cull Jazz at the College of the Pacific). But back then there had been no grand “Project Disney” in the offing. “Alice in Wonderland” might have been designed with Desmond’s love of sensually lyrical melodies in mind (file under “Stardust” or “These Foolish Things”), while a skittish melody like “Give a Little Whistle” appealed to the same side of Brubeck that gravitated toward “Lulu’s Back in Town” or “Frenesi” as material for improvisation. These were songs the Brubecks played to keep their children entertained while driving between gigs.
Each song he chose for Dave Digs Disney was artfully personalized. “Someday My Prince Will Come” further developed the overlay of 4/4 against 3/4 introduced on Jazz: Red Hot and Cool’s “Lover” to become the album’s most talked-about track. But anybody keen to count the beats might have been thrown off the scent by claims in Avakian’s sleeve note that “Dave introduces 4/4 and 2/2 against the rhythm section 3/4.” The juxtaposition of one pulse against another was, in fact, far more complex. Bates was tasked with maintaining a steady 3/4 groove over which Morello superimposed a speedier 4/4 beat; and, as had happened in “Lover,” the rhythm section levitated around the overlapping intersection of strong and weak beats.
For no better reason than that the waltz feel of the original song was so ingrained, most listeners would have felt the rhythm primarily in 3—but that layer of 4/4 was more than a cosmetic trimming. Morello’s exacting brushwork, which rarely peaked above medium-soft, helped oil the fluid rhythmic motion while pumping nervous, anticipatory energy into what would otherwise have been an uncomplicated waltz: not inappropriate given the lyric.
Brubeck’s unaccompanied piano introduction was expansive and tapped directly into the sentiment of the original with cascading, tinsel-draped arpeggios. With Desmond’s seductive reading of Frank Churchill’s theme and the rhythm section on their furtive rhythmic maneuvers, Brubeck’s tidy and precise emphasizing of the waltz’s “two, three” punctuated the texture with the matter-of-factness of secretarial typing. When Brubeck landed solidly on “two,” which he sustained for a whole bar, light beamed through the texture and the groove was given a little bounce; and, as his patterns became more irregular, he moved rhythm and space around the quartet. In his solo, solid 3/4 waltzed against striding 4/4 time, while other bars could be argued (and counted) rhythmically either way—a lesson in hairsplitting rhythmic ambiguity.
The quartet’s “Heigh-Ho!” found a soulful side to a song not normally celebrated for its emotional depth, while a soft-spoken, downy lyricism radiated through “Alice in Wonderland.” But that touch-type rhythmic figuration at the beginning of “Someday My Prince Will Come” planted the most important seed of all. Similar patterns would become a feature of Brubeck’s accompaniments whenever he needed to maintain rhythmic order. And two years later, during the summer of 1959, when the quartet was attempting the seemingly impossible feat of stitching together a new piece in 5/4 time, the best thing Brubeck could do, he realized, was provide unobtrusive rhythmic support with another tidy, neat vamp.”
Source: Philip Clark: Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time [2020]